Out of Order
by SChimes
Summary: Sharon and Rusty, under the weather, over the top, stuck in their usual endearingly clumsy dance around emotions and boundaries. There are a lot of details to iron out as they learn how to be a family, and sometimes they're both terribly unprepared for the wrinkles - and each other's reactions.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This story follows from another prompt (/challenge?), because that's what I get when I whine to my lovely friends in this fandom ;). It's a bit of a departure from my usual all-angst-all-the-time approach, and I was possibly cognitively impaired while writing at least parts of this because of my own flu woes (ugh!), but I hope it came out at least partly intelligible in the end! **

**This takes place in some sort of vague timeline where there's increased security because of the threat letters, but Rusty is still going to school - so you can think of it as either right before 'Poster Boy', or in some undefined later and slightly AU-ish time where he's not on virtual house arrest.**

**Out of Order**

_(or, 'How Sharon and Rusty Learned to Navigate Yet Another Aspect of Daily Life, and Nearly Drove Each Other Crazy in the Process')_

Sharon was moderately sure that she was dying.

She hadn't had the flu in years – in fact, not since the _last_ time that her kids lived at home and didn't care about getting vaccines and brought home all the viruses from school. Living with a kid was like a time bomb in that regard: one never knew what would come next. Living with _two_ children had been even worse, although by the time her younger had hit first grade Sharon's immune system had thankfully adapted. After that, she'd rarely gotten any bugs off her kids (although there _had_ been that one time when her daughter's entire fourth grade class had somehow become infested with lice…). But there had been a couple of years with particularly bad flu outbreaks, when even her painfully-trained immune system had thrown in the towel. Ricky's sophomore year at St. Joe's had been the last, a flu season so bad that the whole school had closed down for a few days since half the students were sick (and had generously passed it on to their families too.) Sharon and her kids had all come down with it then, and had spent the most miserable few days living on bad take-out food and trying to guilt each other into going out for medicine and tissues. (Somehow she'd always lost those fights.)

But that had been – what, eight years before? Nine? And since then, Sharon was proud to say, she hadn't gotten anything worse than the mildest case of the sniffles – and her body had undergone some not-insignificant changes in the meantime, too, all of which she'd weathered with surprisingly few ill effects. Her constitution could generally be relied on to fend off bugs, seasonal colds and assorted afflictions.

Except apparently all those bugs she'd ever resisted had banded together and decided to take their revenge. And they'd succeeded. Her immune system had clearly been targeted, besieged and promptly obliterated, and now its last defendants were being beheaded in the public square.

She felt like she was dead . Maybe she _was_ dead – she _wished_ that she were dead.

The intervening years had made her forget just how _awful_ the flu was, and how much she hated it. Actually, she was pretty sure it can't have been this awful last time, because she would've kicked her kids out for putting her through it. Oh she loved them, sure, but she was pretty certain that she hated _this_ more.

A knock on her door made her roll onto one side and bury her head in her pillow.

"Sharon…? Uh, it's seven-ten…?"

_I hate you_, she thought in resignation. It wasn't enough that he was trying to get her out of bed, but he was doing it in order to get to school, that unholy den of contamination that had probably brought the plague down on her in the first place.

Another knock, and she let out a muffled groan into the pillow. "Sharon? Are you okay…?"

He sounded almost worried, which somewhat mollified her unkindly feelings, even though she still wanted to throttle him because _I told you to get the damn flu shot, didn't I? _ She decided to give her voice a try, and cleared it softly.

"Ten minutes," she called back, wincing when it came out as a croak _and_ made her head start pounding, to boot. "You can finish breakfast without me…"

Then she decided to brave actually getting up, and, pushing the blanket off regretfully, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. And – yup, throbbing temples, aching back, breathing in was a painful effort and her eyes were burning behind her eyelids. When her breath came out dry and hot, she crossed another symptom off the list, and abandoned hope that maybe it was just a bad morning.

This was _the worst_ morning.

She managed to stand up and went over a litany of angry complaints in her mind as she grabbed a robe and wrapped it around herself with shaking fingers. It was still uncomfortable to breathe. Her head felt about three times its regular size, her neck was stiff and her throat was scratchy and Sharon hated, hated, _hated_ all of it.

* * *

She shuffled into the bathroom and might have slammed the door a little harder than necessary, except all it did was reverberate painfully in her head, and it made nothing better.

The medicine cabinet held an impressive assortment of band-aids and elastic bandages, creams, ointments and anti-inflammatory meds for scrapes and bruises, some stomach meds and exactly one unopened bottle of Ibuprofen. In short, everything she thought she'd ever need for the requirements of a teenage boy, and nothing at all that would help her at the moment. A little desperate rummaging revealed an old, nearly-empty bottle of Tylenol and some DayQuil, as well as some of those bags of powder medicine that you were supposed to dissolve into hot water or tea.

All in all, not the best arsenal to combat her current misery, but the powder thing had the words 'relief' on the label, and Sharon would've taken any relief at this point.

She hesitated a good thirty seconds trying to decide whether or not to check the expiration dates on the medicine labels. Did she really want to know? In the end, the adult in her won out, but as usual, being responsible came at a price.

The most recent of the precious flu remedies had expired in 2009.

Sharon stared longingly at the DayQuil.

After all, how bad could it be? And everyone knew medicine didn't really expire when the label said it expired! It was all a ploy by the drug companies. She'd probably be fine – in any case, she couldn't get _worse_, because _nothing_ could possibly feel worse than this. Giving birth had been easier than this! (Okay, maybe that wasn't strictly true, but giving birth had been well over two decades before, and this cursed flu was here and now, and Sharon felt entitled to hyperbolize because _damn it_!)

She felt unreasonably disappointed to discard the long-expired medicine into the trash. She'd have to pick up some more at a pharmacy, and the last thing she wanted right now were _errands_.

Through the bathroom door she heard her phone go off.

Scratch that – the second to last thing she wanted were errands. The _last_ thing she wanted was murder.

Unless it was done by her. In which case, she was okay with it.

* * *

The shower hadn't helped much. If anything, now she was grumpy, aching _and_ shivering slightly with cold, and even throwing on a warmer sweater in lieu of her usual blazer didn't do much. She'd been tempted to take the day off, but she didn't have a fever and she wasn't coughing and honestly her head _had_ cleared a little in the twenty or so minutes since she'd gotten up… and it felt a little wrong to beg off work because she'd caught a minor bug, when there were three murder victims missing various organs and limbs in the morgue, waiting to be given justice.

Perspective: Sharon hated it at the moment. At the very least, she was planning to postpone justice long enough to buy half a pharmacy.

And she definitely wanted to yell at the St. Joe's administration for not forcing their students to get the flu shot. Who _cared_ what a bunch of irresponsible teenagers wanted? _They_ didn't get sick, they just carried it blithely and then inflicted it on innocent others! That was reckless endangerment in the second degree and it was illegal and it just. wasn't. _fair_!

Her indignation abated again when she walked into the living room and Rusty looked up nervously from the couch and he was just _so_ _genuinely_ _concerned_ when he asked: "Everything okay…?" Of course, it would've been better if he _hadn't_ followed it immediately by, "We're already fifteen minutes late," but at least he'd bothered to ask how things were, first…

Sharon grabbed the coffee mug from the table and drank half of it in one go, but the relief only lasted as long as it took the warm liquid to slide down her throat. Her sigh was a little shaky when she put the mug down.

"Sharon?" Rusty was starting to fidget in his seat. "Are you like, sick or something?"

So much for playing it cool. She let her shoulders slump in another uncomfortable breath (lungs weren't _supposed_ to hurt like that, they didn't even have pain receptors for god's sake!). "There's a small chance," she admitted, "that I've contracted the flu." She took another sip of the coffee and contemplated crawling under the table and curling up to die.

Rusty grimaced. "Isn't that why you got that flu shot? I told you it would do more harm than good," he muttered darkly, and he sounded so _convinced_ that she couldn't help a small groan.

"People don't get the flu _because_ of the vaccine, Rusty," she croaked, "they get it _despite_ of it. Mostly because of _other_ people who _don't_ get the vaccine and allow the strains to evolve and then pass it on."

He shrugged defensively at her pointed look. "Hey – I didn't give it to you! I'm not sick!"

Sharon let her chin drop to her chest with another groan. Then she finished the last of her coffee. "Get your schoolbag," she sighed tiredly.

But he hesitated for a moment longer, giving her a doubtful look. "Shouldn't you take the day off if you're sick?"

Sharon carried her coffee mug to the sink. "That's not necessary," she hummed, "I'm not feeling that sick and I'll just stay far enough from everyone to make sure no one else catches it. That includes _you_, young man," she said archly when she turned around to find him right behind her, putting her untouched breakfast plate in the fridge. "Keep. Your. Distance," she instructed.

Rusty shrugged dismissively. "I never get sick."

"Let's keep it that way," she replied, and shooed him away from her with a determined gesture. "Now, go get your schoolbag. We're _twenty_ minutes late…and I'm afraid the flu excuse isn't transferable."

* * *

The excuse turned out to be transferable, after all; the school authorities decided to cut the post-lunch periods and send everyone home for an early weekend in an attempt to stave off another flu outbreak. (Too little, too late, Sharon thought bitterly as she drank the last of her now-cold tea. She was _so_ writing them an angry letter as soon as she managed to hold a pen firmly again.)

By the time Rusty stuck his head through her office door a little after noon, Sharon had decided that life was maybe just not worth living.

She felt pains in muscles and bones she hadn't even known she had. Each breath of air felt so hot and dry as though she were breathing inside a furnace. Her ears were buzzing, her joints felt twice their normal size, her eyelids kept trying to glue together and as if all _that_ wasn't bad enough, she'd lost her voice at some point too. She'd been reduced to issuing her orders in hoarse whispers that made everyone around wince in sympathy.

_Almost_ everyone – Dr. Morales had taken one look at her and promptly slammed on his mask and banned her from the morgue for the next week.

Which was crazy, because there was _no way_ she was allowing this cursed bug a whole _week_. It had one day, that was it, and then it was going away and Sharon would make sure she never got it again, even if she had to forcefully vaccinate every single human being she came into contact with, for every flu season, for the rest of her life.

Starting with her foster son, who'd just walked into her office from his flu-ridden school and now stood there with that cautious look and she didn't know whether to hug him or kill him. A feeling she remembered all too well from the last two teenagers she'd raised.

"How are you feeling?" And again the concern might have been heartwarming, if Rusty hadn't followed it instantly with a wary grimace, "You look awful."

She pressed her lips together in reply, and he backpedalled.

"I mean – more awful than…" Wisely, he trailed off before he could finish 'than usual', because Sharon wasn't sure how _that_ would've gone. "You look like you should be at home," he rephrased.

She _felt_ like she should've been downstairs in the morgue, but admitting that wasn't going to make anything better. Besides, she was banned from the morgue (which frankly was ridiculous, it was _the morgue_ for god's sake! Hardly the place to instate health requirements for admittance…!).

"Don't they have like, sick days, at the LAPD?"

"I'm not sick," Sharon said automatically, "I just have the flu."

Rusty gave her a long look. "You do realize that qualifies, right?" He rolled his eyes at her expression, and slung the schoolbag off to reach into it. "Here." He pulled out a bulky white plastic bag and deposited it on her desk.

Sharon's eyebrows rose, and even _that_ hurt. "What's this?"

"_Medicine_, Sharon." He stuck his hands in his pockets. "You owe my 'security detail' $12.50, by the way," he muttered. "I didn't have enough cash."

A variety of packs and bottles spilled out when she opened the bag, and Sharon couldn't help a warm smile, even though it took an unusual amount of deliberation to get her facial muscles to cooperate. "You didn't have to get me all this," she said softly, but there was a definite pang of relief at the blessed sight of about twelve different kinds of drugs. Modern medicine was her friend right now. "Thank you." She picked up a light-blue box of pills that she'd never heard of before.

"That's for if you're allergic to uhm, … whatever's in Tylenol," Rusty provided. "And the green one is uh, if you're _not_ allergic to Tylenol but you're…" He paused and pulled out a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, which he frowned over. "…okay, if you're allergic to something called pseudo-ephedrine, then that one's okay. Oh, unless you're on any other meds, in which case, you should…read the instructions. Here." He handed her the crumpled paper. "This is everything that the pharmacy guy said."

"Thank you," she smiled again, then immediately had to turn her head and cough dryly into the crook of her elbow.

Ah, yes, the coughing – it had been late to the party, but had made a great entrance halfway through her inspection of the crime scene. It made her chest hurt and her eyes burn and her head pound all over again, and between the racking coughs and the dead bodies, she'd considered herself lucky to the have skipped breakfast, after all.

Suddenly she was very, very grateful for the medicine that littered her desk. And more so for the boy who'd been so considerate to bring them to her, even if he did keep telling her that she looked awful.

* * *

By four p.m., however, Shaon's gratitude had waned. Something weird was happening with Rusty, whereby he was suddenly _everywhere_ she looked. This was the same boy, mind you, who could barely be convinced to sit down for three minutes of small talk about his day, whose idea of being social involved retreating to a desk in the corner and minding his own business, who vocally complained about having to spend all his time at the station and pointedly rolled his eyes and sulked and avoided all of them just to make a point – _that_ boy was now pretty much camped out on her doorstep and seemed to want nothing _but_ the attention he usually eschewed.

It was like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and 'The Twilight Zone' rolled into one, and Sharon wasn't so sure she was equipped to handle the abrupt attitude adjustment. For a little while she'd wondered if she was delirious.

He kept barging into her office about every five minutes despite her repeated warnings to stay away, and he followed her whenever she left the office (with a wary stare if it was impossible to do it in person, though he managed to do it in person just fine and _oh ye gods_), and he generally behaved in a completely uncharacteristic way that could only be described as _hovering_.

Sharon was baffled.

Touched – but _honestly_. The constant surveillance was getting a little unnerving. And there were only that many cups of tea she could handle per unit time. That many reminders about the proper use of medicine (she knew how to take a Tylenol, for god's sake, without a printout from WebMD!) and that many not-so-subtle suggestions to go home. And she was starting to wish she could cough her lungs out in peace without having to worry about _him_ looking miserable whenever she so much as started to clear her throat.

Not to mention he'd started a campaign to dissuade whomever so much as made a move toward her office, his glares and pointed mutters having turned at least three people back from coming to talk to her.

Basically her sweet foster son had abruptly turned into the personal assistant from hell.

Which was only fitting, Sharon figured, since she was feeling as though she _was_ in hell. The constant painful pounding in her head and the inability to breathe in and the way her throat felt like sandpaper… Worse, since she still had no fever (her immune system clearly wasn't even bothering to fight back), most of the meds were not really providing much symptom relief… and she'd lost track of what pills she'd taken, anyway. Not very responsible, but today was just a not-very-goddamn-responsible kind of day.

She lowered her face into her hands and went back to her little fantasy regarding the flu shot dictatorship regime.

"Sharon?"

Her shoulders slumped. She gave Rusty a miserable look, the source of which he clearly misread, since he returned a slightly wary gaze and offered: "I'll get you more tea."

Sharon bit her lips. "That's alright, I still have a nearly full cup … Rusty –"

"It's supposed to be _hot_, Sharon, that's kind of the whole point of tea." he informed her. "Are you feeling any better? Are the meds helping?"

"Yes," she lied, and wasn't all that surprised to find him looking doubtful.

"Are you sure?" He took another hesitant step inside the office, and for the fiftieth time she held up a hand to tell him to _keep his distance_, not that the previous forty-nine times had made any difference. "You don't look so good."

She might've felt mad if he hadn't sounded so honestly worried. And if she hadn't been too exhausted to be mad. And if her ego wasn't too bruised to be mad. _Honestly_, she was fifty- … ish, and she had the flu, and she'd put herself through a full work day to boot, what did he expect, Claudia Schiffer?

"Who's Claudia Schiffer?"

Sharon groaned, first because she hadn't realized she'd muttered the last words out loud, and second because _really_, did he _have_ to keep making her feel old?

"Sharon…" Rusty hesitated with that endearing awkwardness, and she managed to tilt her head about two degrees to indicate that she was listening. "I know you let my security detail go for the day, but if you need to like, go to the hospital or something – "

"Oh god, honey, _no_ –" she waved a dismissive hand, turned to heave another dry cough into her shoulder, then continued in the most persuasive tone her raspy voice could handle: "Rusty, I appreciate that you're concerned, but this is just a seasonal bug," (or maybe the ninth circle of hell) "and there's no need to …" Her voice stopped working again, and she cleared her throat in an effort to get it back.

"Are you sure? 'cause, I don't know…" Rusty looked entirely too nervous, in her opinion. "This doesn't look like the regular flu… are you sure it's not like, pneumonia?"

Sharon sighed. "I'm positive."

He crossed his arms. "I really think you should go get it checked out. Aren't you the one always going on about responsible behavior and good decisions? Going to the doctor when you look like _this_," he pointed at her, "is a 'good decision', Sharon."

Her eyes narrowed (or at least she hoped they did, her eyelids felt a little funny). "Like I said, I appreciate that you're concerned," she wheezed, "and that you want to help. But this isn't the first time I've had the flu – although I fully intend it to the be the last," she joked as an aside. "Trust me, there's nothing for you to worry about. Except catching it yourself," she amended warningly, "if you keep ignoring my advice to _stay out of this office_."

Fifty-one. But Rusty remained unconvinced.

"Don't you have homework to do?" she pleaded.

"Can you at least ask Dr. Morales for a second opinion?"

Sharon closed her eyes briefly. "Rusty. If nothing else, I assure you that I'm nowhere near the stage of requiring Dr. Morales's expertise." (That didn't feel one hundred percent true… but in any case, the ME had made it clear that he wasn't coming anywhere near her without a hazmat suit.) "Besides, there's no _need_ for a 'second opinion'," she added exasperatedly, "it's just the flu…!"

"It could be like, a hundred things!" he protested. "Do you have any idea how many… _reasons_ there are for feeling _this_ sick and coughing and not being able to breathe properly?"

"It's just the flu," Sharon repeated wearily, and again wondered what weird infernal dimension she'd ended up in. Wasn't she supposed to be in charge around here? Why was nothing going her way?

"Yeah, _maybe_ it's just the flu and maybe it's like… tuberculosis!" The boy threw his hands up. "Or… or sarcoidosis! Did you even know those were options?"

Oh, what fresh hell was this?

"It could be bronchitis, pneumonia, _mono_! Sharon, it could be…"

Okay, that was it, he was banned from google for life.

"Rusty – honey," she sighed, "don't look up medical symptoms on the internet. That's not a valid form of diagnosis." Sometimes she forgot just how much he didn't know.

"I wouldn't _have_ to look anything up," he countered, "if you'd just go to a doctor! You know, like _normal_ people! You'd make _me_ go…!"

Oh, if only she _could_ make him _go_.

* * *

Her temples were pounding. The light was starting to hurt her eyes. Her body felt so stiff and sore than she wanted to cry.

Meanwhile, Rusty seemed equally unhappy, fidgeting and balancing on the balls of his feet and looking way more frustrated than he had a right to.

"Just go get checked out, what's the big deal?"

"Lieutenant Flynn!" The sight of the man turning up in her doorway was the most welcome thing Sharon had ever seen, even if the lieutenant was wearing a poorly-suppressed smirk. "Please, come in," (and it may have sounded like permission but really, it was an entreaty.) She turned to Rusty, exhausted. "Go do your homework."

"But –"

"Rusty."

The boy crossed his arms again, an expression of profound disgruntlement on his face, but eventually he stalked out with one last muttered warning about going to a doctor and some tropical disease she'd never heard of. Sharon let out a miserable sigh, and made an effort to turn her attention to Flynn, who was still looking unaccountably entertained.

"That's what you get for not taking a sick day."

She tried for a glare, although it ended up more a grimace of pain. "What is it, Andy?"

"The drug company is trying to get the bodies released into their custody, on the grounds of some consent form the victims supposedly signed." He rolled his eyes. "Their lawyer's outside waving papers."

"We're not done with the autopsies," Sharon protested, "and I'm not releasing those bodies to anyone until we figure out why they died. Go tell the company and their lawyer that murder trumps whatever disclaimer the victims signed."

He nodded. "That's what we thought. I'll go inform them that they can stick their release forms… well. You get the picture."

"Send the lawyer in here if he keeps giving you trouble," she advised tiredly. (If the lawyer wasn't amenable to rational discussion, she could always sneeze on him.)

"I can try, but I'm not sure he'll make it past your bouncer service." Flynn grinned and nodded toward Rusty, who'd resumed his seat at a desk right outside her office. Sharon let her chin drop to her chest. "Can't really blame the kid, though," he continued in a more serious tone.

Sharon hummed noncommittally.

"Sarcoidosis isn't something to take lightly."

Her eyes widened in horror. "He's been _telling_ everyone…?"

The lieutenant grinned again. "Nah, we just caught glimpses of his laptop screen."

Sharon let out a defeated sigh. Great – not only was Rusty convinced that she was old and feeble and plagued by some nasty tropical disease, now he was _spreading_ the notion, too. A small shiver went through her, and she suppressed a vague wave of nausea.

Flynn's expression lost some of its mirth, becoming more sympathetic: "You really should go home. You don't look –"

"_Lieutenant_," she growled. "I think I've reached the limit of how many times I can hear that from the men in my life today."

There was a short pause, and then Sharon froze, mortified alarm flashing almost imperceptibly across her face.

Oh god, she really did need to go home.

* * *

**A/N: This ended here because five thousand words! ! I swear, someone prompts me to write a 'vignette', and my brain just refuses to comprehend the notion... But, I have a little more written (of course... conciseness is NOT my middle name), and might post the rest, if people are interested to see the rest of Sharon and Rusty's flu season misadventures. But really this can stand on its own as a oneshot, too. (I swear I TRIED to keep it short. I just... don't seem to know how to do that.)**

**Thank you for reading! And I hope you have a lovely holiday season :).  
**


	2. Chapter 2

**Wow, the response to this story was overwhelming! Thanks, guys. As promised, here is most of what I hadn't posted last time (there's still a bit of drama left that might go into another chapter eventually). This time, we get to see Rusty's perspective on things, as well as Sharon's, and needless to say they do not exactly line up ;)**

**Out of Order (2)**

Sharon was the worst patient ever.

That morning she'd looked so awful, it had really freaked Rusty out. He'd never seen her like that, she could barely move and she wasn't eating and she sounded so _terrible_! And of course instead of staying home like a normal person she'd wanted to go to work. Him, he could've woken up with a runny nose and jumped at the chance to skip school and just laze about the house for a day – but not Sharon, no, she looked like patient zero in an outbreak movie and she'd _still_ been out of the house by seven-thirty.

Sometimes he just didn't get her.

She'd planned to stop by the pharmacy on her way to work, but Rusty had been completely sure that she'd get distracted and forget. So when the squad car had picked him up after class, he'd insisted to stop by Walgreens and he'd bought – well, everything. Because seriously, there were like five aisles of flu medicine, and how was he supposed to know what Sharon tolerated and what would give her an allergic reaction that included rash, itching/swelling, severe dizziness, trouble breathing and/or serious (rarely fatal) bleeding from the stomach? (Who _made_ those drugs, anyway? They sounded worse than the disease.)

Then when they'd arrived at the station and he'd gone to her office to give her the medicine, he'd thought that maybe the zombie apocalypse had come.

Sharon looked just – awful, again. Her eyes were all red and her lips were dry and her color was all…off and… oh, she must've been in some sort of pain too, because she kept grimacing and wincing and it was all just terrible. Were the rest of them _blind_, that they didn't call a doctor or send her home or… something! It had been hours, and no one had done anything? What was like, wrong with all of them?

And how did _she_ not realize just how sick she was? Well… okay she was Sharon, so she probably could've had the plague and stuck to business as usual but… then what if she got worse? Rusty had never had the flu but this honestly looked too bad to be 'just the flu'. Plus she'd been fine just yesterday, what kind of flu happened so suddenly? Sharon wasn't a doctor, what did she know? (Well – okay she knew _stuff_, obviously, sometimes, but like, not this stuff! She was good identifying suspects, not symptoms.)

So he'd brought her tea and tried to make sure she took the medicine she needed, but nothing was helping. He'd seen her take _at least_ two Advils and she'd had one cup of tea and she still sounded painfully hoarse and she still looked really pale and she wasn't getting better! Why wasn't she getting better?! The pharmacy guy had said the meds would help, and it had been like, half an hour and they weren't helping yet!

Maybe she was taking them wrong.

O maybe it was because she was at work and she didn't have any time to take care of herself because people kept _wanting_ things, and did they really _not see_ that she wasn't up for it at the moment? Really, did Buzz absolutely need her signature on that stupid form right at that moment? No, Rusty hadn't thought so.

Alright, since Sharon didn't have the time to look after herself, Rusty would have to do it for her; he took up position right outside her door and pulled out his laptop and decided to figure out what was wrong with her and how to fix it.

But first he should probably get her some more tea.

* * *

One thing he learned really quickly was that Sharon was very grumpy when she was sick.

Like, seriously grumpy. He had no idea why, but she'd been giving him these exasperated looks all day, and they were only growing more impatient. Not that he'd been helping out in order to earn her gratitude, of course, but like… she was being really unappreciative! When she got better, she'd probably feel really bad about it and apologize.

Until then though, he'd just have to deal with it. It didn't bother him. Sure, it'd be nice if he could figure out a way to make her _less_ grumpy…

(Did Lt. Tao really need to bring her that fax right at that moment? Really? Could he wait until she was like, properly functioning again? Thank you.)

Maybe more tea would help.

Poor Sharon. She looked so terrible. He didn't think she realized just how bad it was, because he'd told her and she'd just rolled her eyes and groaned and told him to go away.

Maybe her attitude was a symptom of her illness, too… Rusty thought for a moment on what to call it, then added 'irritability' to his search key, and pressed enter.

His heart started pounding in sheer panic about two minutes into reading the results. _Of course_ Sharon wasn't feeling well! She was probably like, really sick! He felt tears welling up in his eyes, and glanced back over to her office. She was pressing both hands to her cheeks and she still looked so awful and she should have been in a doctor's office, not at work!

He wanted so badly to help, but it was so _difficult_ because she was clearly feeling too sick to be rational, and Rusty had no idea what to do.

* * *

"I'll make you some tea," Rusty offered as soon as they walked through the apartment door, and Sharon waved him off because just the thought of having to drink more tea felt too exhausting. She let her purse drop to the floor, slipped off the heels and made a beeline to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

"Do you need anything?"

_A mercy killing_. "I'm alright, thank you."

The lights in the apartment were way too bright. And there was way too much light outside, too, for five p.m.. And it was too cold for California.

"If you don't mind," she said tiredly, "I think I might call it an early night. You can use my credit card to order dinner…"

With the increased security and the amount of work at the station, they'd been eating take-out more and more frequently lately; she was definitely not winning any parenting awards anytime soon. But at the moment she couldn't handle _eating_ dinner, let alone making it.

The water in her glass was room temperature, but it felt icy cold against her fingers and made her shiver. By the way her eyes burned and the slight wooziness, Sharon imagined that she was now running a fever, too. Not entirely surprising – every cold and flu she'd ever had had always gotten far worse in the evenings. And the late-onset fever was usually why.

Luckily, she had about two pounds of medicine to at least deal with _that_ symptom.

Rusty hurried to bring her the purse when she began to move toward it; it took a ridiculous amount of effort just to fish out her wallet and hand it to him, and then she pulled the pharmacy bag out and went to refill the water glass.

"Do you want me to call you when the food gets here…?"

"That's okay, honey." The only thing she planned to eat was the whole bottle of Advil. And she'd wash it down with a pint of cough syrup. Who the hell cared about recommended dosages? Liver failure kind of felt like a step up at the moment.

"Uh, Sharon?"

She looked up, saw Rusty's half-concerned, half-confused expression and realized that she'd become so wrapped up in her uncharacteristically-slow thoughts that she'd paused halfway through pouring water from the pitcher, and had been glaring belligerently at the glass.

Well, she had the flu and her entire body ached and she had a fever to boot. Medically, she was perfectly within her rights to act as a lunatic.

"Are you _sure_ that you don't want to like, go to a hospital or somethi –"

"_Yes_," she cut him off firmly before he could launch into the whole sarcoidosis dissertation again. "Don't worry about me, Rusty," she reassured, "I'm sure the worst of this will be over by tomorrow. Enjoy your dinner… let me know if you need anything," she added as an afterthought. And tried to telepathically convey that if he _did_ come to her with any issue in the next twelve hours, it had better involve fire or blood.

* * *

Rusty took the hint. Her body didn't.

Much as she'd planned to hole up for the evening (possibly forever) and hibernate through the worst of the symptoms, reality turned out to involve zero rest and lots of fevered tossing and turning and much mental cursing. In fact, Sharon surprised herself at the breadth of curse words that her mind could muster - being around so many angry suspects had clearly enriched her vocabulary.

Unfortunately, her anger had the same effects on the damn flu that her suspects' anger had on her, namely, none.

She was too cold to stay uncovered, but too achy and uncomfortable to stay under the blanket. Her throat hurt from all the coughing, and her head felt absurdly oversized. _Everything_ felt distorted, actually, her own body and the objects in the room alike. And those drugs that were supposed to knock her out were _not delivering_. Was it really that much to ask for, to just pass out and wake up in the morning feeling slightly _less_ like she'd just gone fifty rounds against a heavyweight-class boxer?

Apparently.

With a muffled moan, Sharon pulled the blanket tighter around herself in the hope of stopping the racking shivers. Thirty seconds later, she threw the blanket off entirely, because it was too heavy and it wasn't helping, anyway. But _so cold_.

Well – luckily the apartment had a thermostat. It had never ever been turned higher than seventy-five, and Rusty would probably be extremely unhappy when she turned it up to ninety, but to be fair, she'd told him to get the flu shot! He should know by now that ignoring her advice was done at his own peril.

She gritted her teeth against the pounding headache as she got out of bed again, and slowly made her way to the door, feeling feverish, congested and grumpy, and about three hundred years old.

* * *

Some undetermined amount of time later, Sharon abruptly woke up on the couch, and at first had no idea how she'd come to be there.

After a brief moment of disorientation, she remembered: after adjusting the thermostat in the hallway, she'd thought to retrieve her phone from her purse, and having accomplished that, she'd been too tired to walk back over to the bedroom. Curling up in the nearest available spot had been meant as a short reprieve to catch her breath, except she'd dozed off instead. It had been anything _but_ restful, an anxious sort of barely-sleep truncated by weird dreams and constant aches, but even so by the time she'd been able to pull herself from it, night had fallen.

Sharon gingerly forced herself to awareness and found a blanket draped across her body, up to her shoulders. Rusty really was making it hard to unreasonably blame him for her misery.

Massaging her neck in an attempt to make it less stiff (it didn't work), she pushed herself to one elbow. Her hair fell in disarray around her face – and even that hurt. Forget getting up, just getting halfway to a sitting position had left her exhausted, so she rested against the throw pillows, too tired to move more, too uncomfortable to fall asleep again. A small moan escaped her lips, and it didn't make her feel any better but damn it, this was the kind of situation where painful moaning was acceptable.

"How are you feeling?"

Sharon jumped slightly, and craned her neck to see Rusty sitting at the table, staring at her between his laptop and his chess board.

"Can I get you anything?"

"No… I'm fine – what are you still doing up?" She checked her wristwatch. "It's almost midnight…" Her voice was so hoarse it barely carried to him, but clearing it wasn't working because her throat was too dry.

"Tomorrow's Saturday, Sharon," the boy sighed, and walked over to the kitchen. Sharon heard the sound of running water, and a moment later he presented her with a glass. "Are you hungry?" She couldn't contain a nauseated grimace. "Right. How about some… soup? We can order some…" He sounded doubtful, and for good reason – no good places would deliver at that hour, and there was no way she could handle bad, greasy take-out soup; the thought alone was turning her stomach. "Or I can try to make you some," Rusty hurried to add. "There's some chicken in the freezer and I think we have some vegetables…I'll google a recipe…"

She sighed, her heart warming all over again. (Which fit in just great with the increased and slightly irregular pulse.) "Rusty, I appreciate the offer, but you don't need to make me soup in the middle of the night. I'll be fine." She managed a smile, shifting a little uncomfortably against the throw pillows to ease the ache in her back. "Go to bed. And stop standing so close to me," she added as an afterthought as she tried to suppress a cough.

Rusty rolled his eyes. "I told you, I never get sick. And… did you actually eat anything, at all, today?"

Sharon gave him the bleariest wry look. "Stop tempting fate. And yes," she added in a slightly softer tone at his expectant look, "I did have some food, thank you."

He looked surprised at her answer for a moment, then tilted his head and gave her a suspicious look. "Anything _other_ than that tangerine in the morning?"

They should really stop letting him hang around electronics while they conducted interviews. He was learning too much.

* * *

Getting Rusty to finally go to his room had felt like a true victory. And for good reason – Sharon was fairly sure that nations had clashed in historic battles that had involved _less_ effort than it had taken to get her son to move twenty feet down the hall.

_'Uh, shouldn't _you_ go to bed?_'

_'You know most of those meds need to be taken on like, a full stomach. It said so on the instructions sheet.' _

_'You did read the instructions, right?'_

_' –also a medical hotline, if you don't want to go to the hospital we can call them and ask what they think…'_

_'Sharon…?'_

It was a tenacious strategy really, because a little more of _that_ and she'd have been required to go to a hospital after all – for psychiatric care. Luckily, miraculously, she'd eventually managed to stumble onto the right words, though she couldn't even remember if it had been a firm instruction, or a desperate plea, or the threat of severe bodily harm that had gotten the boy to finally pack his things and Go To Bed.

He'd still come back out into the living room twice, ostensibly to get water, once, then to check if the door was locked, and both times he'd given her these _looks_ and _dear god, she had_ the flu, _she wasn't rattling out her last breath here_!

When he'd asked her if she needed help getting to the bedroom, she'd really had to put her foot down because heartwarming concern, yes, but enough was enough.

Although, when he'd finally managed three minutes without stepping out into the hallway again, and Sharon let out an exhausted sigh and decided it was time to actually head back to her own bed and give the whole hibernation thing another go, she did have to admit that maybe she was being overambitious. The bedroom felt about six thousand miles away. Her body felt about six thousand years old.

And she was already lying down. There were pillows and things. And a glass of water nearby. And she did already have a blanket … The thermostat was turned up, and Rusty hadn't even protested… and was it really that terrible, to just sit there on the couch for a few more minutes?

She shifted against the back of the sofa and lowered her head to one of the pillows again.

It was really very nice of Rusty to have brought her the blanket. And offered soup. And…okay, the impossible child in the other room did have his good points… as long as he stopped trying to drag her to the ER and quit looking at her as though she were patient zero of an Ebola outbreak, Sharon thought she might even be inclined to remember what those good points were.

* * *

Sharon had looked about ten times worse by the time they got home, and Rusty didn't know what pills she'd taken or why they weren't working (the pharmacy guy had said they'd _work_!), but clearly she needed to be seen by a doctor.

But she'd just retreated to her bedroom and he'd spent an hour wondering what would happen if she got _worse_ and he wouldn't know and she wouldn't be able to call out for help and should he tell her to leave the door open? But what if she was already asleep and he'd only wake her up and make everything worse?

(she was _very_ grumpy when she was sick.)

He could hear her coughing through the closed bedroom door, and she sounded awful. Like, he'd known old homeless men who spent their days rolling tobacco, who'd sounded better. His stomach clenched anxiously the longer he listened, because poor Sharon – but at the same time, he'd gotten her cough syrup, and he couldn't understand why she wasn't just taking that. Maybe she'd forgotten. He should remind her.

And really, those seemed less like coughs and more like… convulsions! Rusty cringed at the sound; he could hardly bear to listen to her. And it just kept going and he felt so bad and why was Sharon coughing so much?

He breathed a sigh of relief when a minute finally passed in silence. It seemed like she had finally stopped…

…wait. Why had she stopped coughing? Rusty strained his ears, then jumped up from his bed. _Why wasn't she coughing anymore?! _

Should he call 911?

Then he heard the bedroom door open, and okay. Good. She was alive. He could tell she'd gone into the living room, and he briefly debated whether to follow her or not because really, _very_ _grumpy_.

But, like, maybe she needed something. And he had to remind her about the cough syrup, anyway.

He found her asleep on the couch, in the most uncomfortable position possible, but honestly she looked so exhausted that he couldn't bring himself to wake her up.

There were two bright spots in her cheeks despite how pale she was otherwise, and she was shivering slightly, so Rusty got her a blanket from the closet and was really grateful that she didn't wake up when he pulled it all the way up to her shoulders. She let out a little moan and shifted her position slightly and he felt panic surging once again because _what was happening_ and _why did Sharon look so awful_?

But there was nothing to do but wait for it to get better…or at least that's what she kept saying. So he just brought his things to the living room table and sat down in such a way as to have a clear view of her, and carefully checked that she was still breathing. She was – but it sounded painful, and she was still fidgeting a lot and there was the occasional whimper and Rusty must've circled the couch twenty times trying to figure out something _more_ to do, only he couldn't think of anything.

So he sat at the table late into the night, glancing over at her every other minute and looking up ways to cure the flu (if it even was the flu), only the internet was failing him for the first time in his life, because _no one_ had anything useful to say and it had been like, _thousands of years_, how had no one figured out how to make this better?

Well, some sites seemed pretty convinced to have the right cure. But like, where would he even get leeches or an acupuncturist this late at night?

* * *

**Thanks for reading! ****There *might* be a third and final chapter (like I said there's a little drama left and it might involve some more overreacting on Rusty's part and some more unwise decisions on Sharon's part and maybe a very baffled 911 operator :D), but again, we can also consider this story more-or-less complete as it is. **


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